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Make Me Laugh – A Comedy One-Shot Contest

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
Make Me Laugh – A Comedy One-Shot Contest

Welcome! We’re revisiting older contest themes, and as I’m biased, we’re going with Comedy for the next SPPF Fanfic Contest theme.


The Rules

  • As always, all Fan Fiction rules apply.
  • There is no restriction on theme, but do not expect the judges to be familiar with fandoms beyond Pokémon.
  • It must be a new story written for this contest - you cannot submit material you've previously posted that simply happens to fit the theme, or a rewrite of an earlier story that fits the theme.
  • You may not post your entry publicly until the contest results have been posted; however, you may send your story privately to beta readers for feedback before submitting it. You must credit beta readers in your entry.
  • In the interest of time for judges, entries should not exceed 10,000 words. We do account for the varying results given by different word counters and won't disqualify you for exceeding that count slightly, but if you go significantly over we will have to ask you to edit down your entry.
  • If you have any questions about eligibility, please don't hesitate to ask the judges, either in this thread or by PM.

Once your entry is ready, please PM it to bobandbill no later than 23:59 UTC on 31st August 15th September. If you make edits to your entry after submitting it, you may resubmit it up until the deadline. I will handle getting your entry to the other judges. You may submit the entry entirely within PM, or link to it, e.g. a google document.

The judges for this competition are Bay, Spiteful Murkrow, and myself. We'll also be trying out a different scoring system to previous contests here. Entries will be given a score out of 30 points, 10 for each of the following categories:

Spelling and Grammar
Characterization, Plot, and Description
Comedic Value


Best of luck, and make us laugh! Or else.
 
Last edited:

Bay

YEAHHHHHHH
Hello everyone, one of the judges Bay here! It's almost two months now and we're wondering how everyone is doing with their entries. Still working hard on them? Almost finished? Basically tell us how you're felling right now!
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
Still working on my story. At this point I admit I'll probably need an extension of one week to get it in on time.
In discussion but 1, likely 2 week extension will be granted.
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
So, despite initial interest, we have a total of two entries. That is enough for a contest, but only just, and more entries would be ideal.

The judges and I are extending the deadline to the end of September for any last-minute entries. Please do give it a try if you're interested.

To sweeten the deal, I will also give a separate review to another story (posted on sppf) of their choosing for each entrant (including those that already submitted an entry), following judging on my end.
 

TheCharredDragon

Tis the Hour to Reload
Ok imma gonna admit it.

A large part of me not writing for this is cause i lost inspiration and am focusing on other projects to want to bother even trying even with the extensions

Aaaaand then you offer that review deal and it basically tempted me...and now I'm starting something.

Ah motivation/incentivizing...isn't it wonderful?

Hopefully I'll actually get it written but I'll tell ya if I can't.
 

pacman000

On a quest to be the best...
You did get my entry, didn’t you?
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
You did get my entry, didn’t you?
Yes, it's received.

We're at five entries now, much healthier numbers! Thanks to the newer entrants.
 

TheCharredDragon

Tis the Hour to Reload
So, since the submission period's over (I think; I'm assuming so even if there's no formal announcement over it atm), I think it's a thing to ask who are the entrants so...

Is it all right if we know the entrants? I'm curious about it.
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
Entries are indeed closed now. Thanks to everyone for entering.

Entrants were:

pacman000
The Walrein
Auraninja
TheCharredDragon
mehmeh1

We'll work on judging now, and once my side is done I will work on those promised reviews. You can already PM/DM me which other story of yours you want me to tackle - I just won't start until judging from myself is complete.
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
The results are in!

Firstly, thanks to Bay and Spiteful Murkrow for their work in judging this contest, and promptly as well!

Secondly, thanks to all the participants, and congratulations on getting an entry in - it's never easy to do so within a time limit, and it's an achievement in itself. And every entry did make me laugh! So thank you for the entertainment.

Please do share your entries in a thread in the main section, and also let me know what story you'd like me to review too as the participation reward.

Results are being posted in a series, from 5th to 1st place, as has been done in many previous contests.
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
5th place: "Pockemon - The First Gym" by pacman000

Scoring

JudgeSpelling/GrammarCharacter, Plot and DescriptionComedic ValueTotalFull Total
Bay76619
bobandbill75517
Spiteful Murkrow7441551


BAY

I mentioned this on another entry that also does a script-style writing for this contest. Script fics can be great for comedy if done right, and you did the script style the proper way with dialogue and description focused if you're the camera person.

Onto the premise itself, I'm a bit mixed over it. The doughnuts jokes I've seen and heard a lot and those tend to be amusing, but that's also a joke for me personally that because I've been a bunch of times it lost some steam for me. Brock is known as a womanizer and that joke is also tiring.

For the most part it's a semi-rewrite of that Pewter Gym episode, but there are some comedic and story bits I like. I like the little comedic meta of Ash thinking he can defeat the gym without the manual. Ash could've easily stolen the badge from Brock when he became unconscious but decided not to and a bit surprising. And lol over his Cockney accent (still fresh from playing The Great Ace Attorney where one of the characters has a British Cockney accent).

SPITEFUL MURKROW

Spelling/Grammar

7. Some minor odds-and-ends issues here and there, including a few typos that I spotted. On the whole the text that is there is grammatically fine, but there’s not a lot of it since it’s in script format and missing quite a bit of description.

Character, Plot and Description

4. I kinda get what you were going for with the “first gym challenge, but intentionally ridiculous/played for laughs” premise, but unfortunately things kinda fell flat for me. It might have been due to the dialogue being disembodied and lacking background events or body language to help sell what was going on, but for whatever reason, the dialogue was clearly written with the intent to be funny but didn’t really move the needle. I guess I would compare it to listening to an audio recording of a funnier episode from the anime, you miss out on a lot without the visual component, and unfortunately a similar dynamic was in play here from the lack of description.

Description and story structure are the source of most of the quibbles that I have with this story, since the story would honestly have been a lot less dry if you had something as simple as filled-in descriptive prose with the likes of a snarking narrator or visual gags like Pikachu giving a “what is wrong with you?” face when Ash yoinks a badge off of Brock. Also, beyond the structural benefits of taking your story out of script format, you have some cynical reasons for wanting to do so as well: script fics are banned from being hosted on a large number of platforms, and Serebii is very picky about the ones it accepts for hosting. So if you want exposure, you’d likely need to put your story into prose format anyways.

Not really sure what the “Pockemon” thing was about though, since you made a whole intro about that, but it didn’t go anywhere. If the intent was that it’s a “bloopers reel” version of something we’re familiar with, it might have made sense to play that up more in the intro.

Comedic Value

4. Again, I can see what you’re going for in your story, though in its present state, things are a bit too disjointed for the individual gags to weave together and really stick their landing. I’d compare the overall dynamic to a scrapbook page put together without tape or glue. The moment it tilts slightly, everything just slides off of it.

Mind you, I think that much of the stuff you wrote out could work well in a rewritten version, but it needs more context and framing to meld everything together. I strongly suggest giving the narrator a voice and describing the body language/physical reaction of the cast more, especially for the Pokémon since they don’t have intelligible dialogue of their own to show off their emotional state, so if you don’t show it through their reactions and body language, the readers won’t pick up on it.

Concluding Thoughts

Your story has potential, but it needs a number of structural reworks to work effectively as a comedic piece. Your story’s comedy at the moment basically derives from it being a caricature of an otherwise normal scenario in the games and anime, and as such, you want more description and maybe some snark from the narration to really lean into that. Also, if you’re going to go with “absurdist take on a normal scenario”, it might make sense to have that leak into the rest of the world of the story, since it actually felt relatively grounded, which I felt undercut the shtick you were going for.

It’s up to you as to whether or not you opt to sink the time sanding off the edges and polishing things up for your story, but I’d encourage you to do it just to cut your teeth on the structural side of storytelling, since it’d both benefit your story quite a bit and allow you to carry it forward into other writing. Since in spite of the issues that I had with this entry, I really think that with more proverbial meat on its bones, it could turn into something quite charming and entertaining to read.

BOBANDBILL

Script format can be tough to pull off, and it was good to see you included decent stage directions and descriptions during that. I do feel that this could have been expanded upon though, which would have added more description and potential for jokes – and enhanced what you had there as well. Some more polish there would have helped.

Beyond that, spelling and grammar was mostly fine. There were a few typos, but nothing too major. Really, the main complaints on this side from myself would be the script format.

A little more setup into the story may have helped as well. We were dropped into the battle pretty quickly, and it felt like things resolved itself hastily as well, courtesy of Brock. A bit more time fleshing those aspects.

The comedy is hit and miss, but I did laugh! Ash finding himself doing the training was nice, and his ignorance on the word (Pokemon) hubris was good too, in character for a new trainer. Cocky/cockney was also a good joke. I did find the “Pockemon” joke a bit confusing rather than funny to be persisted with, however – that didn’t quite land for me, and I will admit the doughnut jokes are a bit overdone and hence didn’t quite work out here for me either.

Overall it was a decent basis and the few bits at the end does show promise for this to be turned into a larger story! I think it would benefit from more expansion and polish on the script presentation side, first and foremost, and a slower development of events/the plot.
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
4th place: "The Hunt for the Crime Boss" by Auraninja

Scoring


JudgeSpelling/GrammarCharacter, Plot and DescriptionComedic ValueTotalFull Total
Bay65617
bobandbill66618
Spiteful Murkrow7551752

BAY

Houndoom are indeed best pupper.

"Looker walks on the floor, only to get massively disoriented."

GIOVANNI'S WILD RIDE.

So I noticed you went for a semi-script style for this fic. Script fics can be great for comedy if done right, but here I feel it might've been better as a prose work since you have some commentary like the Machamp best for police bursts and the ending.

There are some amusing parts here and there. The Houndooms best puppers is cute and I enjoyed Cyrus's part in this. I also chuckled at the reference to the more serious Pokemon Generations Episode 2. Looker's "Crap it's like one of those dumb crime shows" is also fun. Since Looker met with Xerosic in X/Y I felt there was some missed opportunity for Looker referencing that. Also Xerosic pulling a Lysandre with the buttons and then Giovanni getting away falls a little short for me.

SPITEFUL MURKROW
Spelling/Grammar

7. Some minor odds-and-ends issues here and there. The prose and dialogue is fine, but is bogged down by deeper structural issues mostly stemming from an overall lack of it.

Character, Plot and Description

5. It pains me to be this harsh, since the plot’s premise of “Looker gets stuck with crime bosses in the hunt for Giovanni” is one of those things that has a lot of potential to be a fun riot, but this entry didn’t really stick the landing thanks to some structural issues.

The characters all felt a bit generic in their present incarnations, it’s most jarring with Looker and Cyrus since Looker is canonically fairly overdramatic and has a bit of a goofy way of speaking that actually would lend itself well to a comedy one-shot. Cyrus doesn’t really have his “creepy emotionless shell” thing come through, which would’ve provided bait for “are you always like this/what’s wrong with you?”-style comedy. For absurdist comedy like this, you essentially want to take canon personalities and then exaggerate it for laughs, and let the chaos unfold as they butt heads with one another.

Description and story structure is the primary reason why I’m rating this as harshly as I am, since frankly there’s not enough of it. Even if you stick to script format (and I strongly recommend you don’t since fics in that format are banned on many sites), you want to describe your setting and events more. Also, use scene breaks, since things kinda blurred together without them.

Comedic Value

5. There’s some flashes of humor here and there, but the structural issues kinda hold things back and make what would otherwise be funny sequences confusing or fall flat. It’s especially jarring with the Houndoom segments since they literally come out of nowhere and aren’t described in the non-dialogue portions of the script.

The thing that I thought you did well was with the bantering narrator in some of your longer descriptive paragraphs. If you’d written this out in full prose and we’d gotten to see more of that narrator, I think it would’ve helped the overall story since you could essentially have the narrator mocking the characters and the absurdism of the scenario the entire way through.

Concluding Thoughts

Your story needs quite a few structural reworks in order to fully live up to its potential. Put in hard scene divisions, and describe what’s going on in them more fully. Also, given how much of the story’s comedy comes from lampshading expectations, you might want to make your characters more caricaturized and lean into the absurdism value of “a crime boss, a creepy monotone guy with a god complex, and an incompetent detective get together” by having them react and bicker with each other more. Since you know that they wouldn’t exactly get along well. :V

That’s not to say that I think you should just bin your story, I actually think it has a lot of promise. If you knuckled down and fleshed things out more, I think you’d have a really funny one-shot or multi-shot on your hands. It’s up to you as to whether or not you go for it, but I’d encourage you to spend some time sanding off the edges and polishing your story, since ingredients for and core of a really funny story is present right now, but the delivery isn’t quite there yet.

BOBANDBILL

Poor Looker, going to all that effort for Giovanni to get away again.

Script format can be fine, but there does need to be more in the way of stage direction and emphasis on how lines are given, as well as description of setting (which was lacking). I think that would have helped the story greatly, as well as the humour. Cryus didn’t quite feel as deadpan as I would have expected, for example, which may have been more evident had he had more indication he spoke his lines quietly, didn’t make many expressions, etc compared to the other characters.

Besides that, there were only some typos here and there, but a lot that could make the story stand out with that extra effort to the script presentation.

The plot was a nice idea – I enjoyed seeing Looker interact with other villains like that as they go off on an adventure, and there were good jokes as well (Looker comparing the story to a crime show, for instance). Good observation on Houndoom as well! Certainly there were some laughs from me here.
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
3rd place: "Pokémon: Carnival Magenta Version" by TheCharredDragon

Scoring


JudgeSpelling/GrammarCharacter, Plot and DescriptionComedic ValueTotalFull Total
Bay88824
bobandbill77822
Spiteful Murkrow7661965

BAY

I see that you're having this as a parody of the main games and a bit of the anime too. While first-person point of view is a mixed bag for many people, I think it works well here as it shows Magenta's wit here. I also like the narration going back and forth with the Pika-announcers and the craziness happening. (I admit I also didn't see Magenta going to get a water Pokemon by diving semi-naked lol).

The pacing reminds me of the Pokemon Origins mini-series where it shows a bit of Red's journey in the beginning and then goes straight to Giovanni and the League. In this piece, it's focused a bit on Magenta helping her first Pokemon coping with their losses against Ash and the first few badges with some mentions of Team Goh on the side. The plot then goes straight to the final villain battles and shiny Mew before going to the League. I do get not wanting to chronicle all the gym leaders and such before this is supposed to be a parody. That bit though with mentions of Magenta and her Pokemon celebrating each victory feels more like feel-good fluff, which is still cute!

Speaking of Team Goh, I've watched a good chunk of Pokemon Journeys and get that referenced. I am well aware the anime fans either love or hate Goh, and to be honest I'm more of the former. I guess that reference was a bit in your face to me.

SPITEFUL MURKROW

Spelling/Grammar

7. Generally good, but there were a lot of typos and tense errors scattered around that could’ve been caught by reading your prose aloud. I’d have been harsher, but this entry was prose end-to-end, so I cut it some slack

Character, Plot and Description

6. I get that the story’s gimmick is that it’s “defeat the League in an afternoon and mock series clichés along the way”, but even in spite of that things still felt rushed. Lots of things suddenly get revealed after the fact like Magenta suddenly picking up new Pokémon or evolutions out of nowhere. You might find it worth considering converting your format from one “long cut” for the story, to a series of short cuts as a vignette or a montage.

There are a few other larger quibbles that I had with this story, the first of them that I had is that the story’s narration can be a bit confusing since it jumps between inner voice and commentary quite frequently.

Also, you should consider having more description in general since the lack of it makes some scenes hard to follow, and others fall a bit flat. One thing that really stood out from the lack of description was that I didn’t get a solid read on a lot of character details because of it. For instance, it took me a while to pick up Magenta on still being a human in spite of having a Gengar dad and literally going in the luggage with him.

The part where this stood out to me most as something that undercut the story’s beat was that one 3-page battle sequence set to a very animated anime OP’s lyrics near the end… where all the actual action in it occurs in after-the-fact single bits of dialogue. There are two routes that would’ve improved it there, one would be to describe things more given how the OP you set things to literally is paired with flashy action sequences in its originating work. Or alternatively get a bit meta and use your narration to poke fun at the story quite literally fast-forwarding through various events.

The other big quibble I have is that the characters are a bit dry, especially ones not named ‘Magenta’ or the announcerchus. While it’s funny for some characters like Ash and Goh where the story is taking the piss out of them transparently filling a role, it doesn’t work for all of them. Freesia and his teammates in particular could get more chances to show off their personalities, or else lampshade a lack of them in the narration

Comedic Value

6. I like the overall premise, but structural issues aside, it felt like there was quite a bit left on the table such as making jokes in the narration about how absurd everything is. The ‘reused assets’ joke was pretty great, but you need a bit more along those lines especially since you establish that the narrator’s a bit of a snarker. For example, in the final Team Evil sequence, it might’ve made sense showing Bianca-chu and Barry-chu get horrified over how Magenta handles it since they were shown being taken aback by her chucking Collector Goh out a window earlier in the story, and the entire sequence there is significantly more violent. It feels like a simple thing that could’ve been done to make that part a bit funnier and more animated.

Magenta’s finale with Bianca-chu and Barry-chu also might’ve worked better showing Magenta getting more and more fed up with their presence as the story went on. She actually seems to be going on that track for about two-thirds of the story, but then winds up backing off in the last third until the very end. The joke at the end works best as a “much-delayed revenge finally arrives” sort of thing, which ideally you want consistent buildup towards.

I generally found the second half of the story to be funnier after I realized what was going on premise-wise. You might want to make it more obvious what the direction of the story is earlier on if you touch this entry up. I’d also like to point out that your narration can get pretty funny at times. Make more use of it and describe more about things that are actually happening since huge chunks of your story were disembodied dialogue, and given that your inherent plot premise assumes a very sped-up series of events, it might make sense to have the story itself poke fun at some of the absurdities and more obvious fast-forwarding.

Concluding Thoughts

Your entry has the ingredients of a funny story and made me smile at times, but it was a bit hit-or-miss on delivery. There are two directions I think you can potentially take things that I think would help:

- In Column A, you could cut the story up into individual scenes to better focus on different sequences that would get expanded. Going this route also also opens doors for stuff like Gilligan Cuts or shot-and-chaser moments that doing a long cut doesn’t lend itself well to
- In Column B, you could keep the “long cut” format, but build up certain things more and have the narration through Magenta and possibly the announcerchus question and lampshade things that come out of nowhere and the “Plot” very obviously cutting corners for comedy value. For example, you could potentially pull off the bit where Pilea is mentioned for the very first time under that route like so:

“Thankfully Freesia and Iris were already level fifteen more or less at that point. Our newest addition, Pilea the Zubat, not that far behind. I probably should’ve been more concerned that I suddenly had an entire extra Pokémon with a name that seemingly came out of nowhere, but whatever, it made for a quick battle. However, when it ended, someone bumped into me.”

If you do expand your entry for publishing, I’d strongly encourage you to add more narration and description in general. They’re both good fodder for absurdist humor in your setup and it helps your audience better visualize what’s going on. Remember that a picture’s worth a thousand words, but you don’t have pictures to work with in a written medium, so you kinda need words to paint a picture :V

I’ll be rooting for you to put a fresh coat of paint over your story, since even if it’s a bit rough right now, I think that a little extra polish on this story would’ve let it hit its comedic notes better. I think the premise is solid, just spit shine it a bit and I think that you’ll have an end product that’ll be really funny and make others laugh.

BOBANDBILL

A neat take on a run of the games, and I take it some anime aspects as well, with some good old fourth wall breakage involved.

There were some spelling and grammatical mistakes throughout, that could have been tidied up. It was a long entry so it does average out, but nonetheless it did detract a bit more. The general plot and ideas with it was fine; my main suggestion to improve it there would be the pacing. Some parts seemed to transition very quickly, which is hard to avoid when you’re trying to parody and involve so much in the entry. More description in parts would have helped with slowing scenes down to alleviate this issue.

I liked the interactions between our protagonist and the narrators, including some bargaining involved in getting events to happen favourably. Those were the funniest to me, and I also appreciated the silly finale complete with anime lyrics coming from nowhere.

Some bits of the tale were a bit odd – the trainer was as far as I can tell human, but had a Gengar parent? This didn’t really come up anywhere else in the story or had an impact, which does feel like a missed opportunity. These areas could have been used to make the tale even funnier.
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
2nd place: "Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Poison Ivy Wings" by mehmeh1

Scoring


JudgeSpelling/GrammarCharacter, Plot and DescriptionComedic ValueTotalFull Total
Bay77721
bobandbill77822
Spiteful Murkrow6892366

BAY

So I'm going to put a disclaimer here that I haven't played any of the Mystery Dungeon games but I know some of the references like a few locations and some of the characters. I'm familiar at least of Wigglytuff, Primal Dialga, Grovyle, and Team Skull.

Speaking of Wigglytuff, oh dear Wigglytuff really loves those perfect apples huh? I admit the image of Wigglytuff able to smack Primal Dialga is priceless.

"Koffing used the explosion TM on himself, and thus...well he did the thing."

I admit this line had me chuckle because gosh Koffing and Explosion.

After Grovyle's appearance, the pacing got weird/rushed. You went from Nod's group trying to find the golden apple to them going through several dungeons before getting back to the plot. I get the distraction is to avoid Wigglytuff, but that part feels out of place for me.

I notice the grammar aspect of your piece needs more polish. There are several instances where in the dialogue the first word is uncapitalized and there's also missing punctuation.

SPITEFUL MURKROW

Spelling/Grammar

6. Okay, this is where I’m going to be at my harshest in this review. There are lots, and lots of typos and missing punctuation that could’ve been fixed by looking things over more closely before submission. The prose and dialogue aside from them are largely fine, but things got a bit muddled at times because of it. In spite of being riddled with mistakes of that nature, the writing largely shined through even with those issues and was still funny.

Character, Plot and Description

8. Full disclosure, but my rating here is very heavily being carried by two things:

- The characterization, which I feel is excellent, since all of the characters felt like relatively believable exaggerations of their canonical selves and are really entertaining to watch interact with each other and develop in a completely off-the-wall fashion from the Explorers games.
- The plot. While AU retellings are a dime a dozen for PMD games, I’ll admit I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one for the Explorers games in which the protagonists wound up teaming up with Team Skull to try and stay one step ahead of getting the stuffing beaten out of them by one very angry Guildmaster Wigglytuff. Kudos for managing to completely derail the canon plot, while keeping it surprisingly well-paced and hilarious.

That said, there were some quibbles that I had with this story. There are a ton of talking heads moments in this entry, and the description is very sparse. Describe more of the surroundings and the events that are unfolding, even if it’s at a high level due to the sped-up nature of the plot. Remember that you are in a written medium, and the difference between five guys standing around talking in a room in a written story, and them throwing stuff around in it is you explicitly describing them moving around and stuff flying about.

Your dialogue tags also sometimes got a bit samey since pretty much everything was “said [X]” at the very end or else lacking entirely with very few cues to tell characters apart aside from verbal tics. It got a little jarring to see moments where characters were shouting at the top of their lungs or crying with just the same old “said [X]” at the end as the speech tag.

Comedic Value

9. Your entry genuinely made me laugh the most of the entries I read. It takes a ridiculous premise and makes it work with characters that largely feel true to their canonical selves after being run through an absurdist lens. I thought that you got good mileage both from absurdist humor and also poking good natured fun at things from the games, stuff like the gag of Porygon spamming Agility definitely made me feel like you were leaning into your story being based around the Explorers games and making the most of it.

There are a couple moments that probably would’ve worked better with more detailed description or else scene cuts. The moment where the protagonists get to the Juice Bar in the Mystery Dungeon and trash it within five minutes comes to mind. It’d be a bit funnier either if we saw the aftermath in more detail, or if you did the equivalent of a discretion cut, describe an unseen racket, and show them stagger out in an obviously disheveled mess once the five minutes were up.

The ending is perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing about it beyond maybe describing the surroundings and the different characters’ reactions a bit more. :V

Concluding Thoughts

It’s not perfect, but I genuinely liked this entry and in spite of the bones I had to pick with it, had fun reading it the whole way through. I think that if you cleaned things up and fixed some of the structural problems with the entry, you’d have a solid one-shot that’d make smiles go for miles.

BOBANDBILL

An ambitious tale that mostly worked – but I will say that I think it could have been shortened in various areas and benefited from it. There was something to like in each part, but overall there was a lot of jumping to new areas and dungeons with barely a moment pause for the crew, and in a sense myself as well. It sure felt like Wigglytuff was chasing them throughout, but it dragged on for a bit too long in my opinion. Trimming some of the dungeons would be worth considering, and shifting some parts within that elsewhere.

The characterisation was the highlight here, along with the way they grew to support and appreciate each other more during their adventures. It also provided a lot of the humour, and I quite enjoyed that. I laughed several times, so well done there.

Description could have been expanded upon at times, such as around dialogue which at times dominated the story. It’s sometimes rather absent, so I suggest looking at that some more, because when you use it it’s pretty good. Beyond the earlier comment on pacing and perhaps unnecessary aspects, the plot itself was fine, played with the games a good amount, and allowed for some pretty funny scenes and moments (such as characters being ushered away from trying to capture Grovyle, Koffing using Explosion, and Primal Dialga getting wrecked).

A good entertaining story overall – it just may need some structural changes and more description to enhance the comedy and the tale itself.
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
And that brings us to...

1st place: "Hitmontop Saves The Day" by The Walrein

Scoring


JudgeSpelling/GrammarCharacter, Plot and DescriptionComedic ValueTotalFull Total
Bay98926
bobandbill88925
Spiteful Murkrow8772273

BAY

This is a fun Pokemon-centered piece there! I can't help but like Himontop's enthusiasm and motivation despite being beaten up by the other Pokemon and losing to Malamar's head-standing "contest." I actually thought it's kinda clever that you referenced the Inky/Malamar's method of evolution there. I'm usually mixed on the butt monkey trope as that's how Himontop is presented, so I do feel sorry for him when he wasn't taken seriously.

I finished reading this faster than expected, but that's a good thing considering this being a comedy contest. I think the parts that had me laughing the most were when Throh got naked and use his robe to deal with his enemy, and Arceus suddenly appearing going POKEMON WITH GUNS. The latter was totally random but can't go wrong with Pokemon with guns.

I do feel shortly after Malamar and her group appear that it went more towards the action side for a while. Speaking of action, the pacing of it was fine for the most part.

SPITEFUL MURKROW

Spelling/Grammar

8. Pretty good, though there’s a couple of misused words here and there that would’ve been caught by reading aloud. No real big quibbles on this front from my end, though.

Character, Plot and Description

7. The plot was simple and serviceable, but it admittedly felt a bit rushed. Part of that was an artifact of the entire plot being jammed into a long cut where you probably would’ve gotten more mileage dividing up the story into multiple scenes so that you could better sell a progression of time flowing instead of everything feeling like it happened within the span of 10 minutes.

The description you had was pretty good, but even so, you had a number of sequences where there was a lot of disembodied dialogue that could’ve been broken up by the likes of describing body language or minor things in the background for the characters to react to/interact with. There’s no hard-and-fast rule on that, but in general, going past about 4 to 5 lines of pure dialogue tends to get into a danger zone of feeling “talking heads” in nature.

Fortunately for you, your characters while simple were genuinely funny, especially the Hitmons plus Sawk and Throh. Their dialogue and interactions with each other are carrying this section quite a bit, and without them, this entry wouldn’t have been anywhere near as charming.

Pacing quibbles aside, your story felt pretty coherent on the whole. I do have to nitpick the ending for two reasons though. The first is that it’s a bit of a non-sequitur and kinda comes very abruptly without any warning or foreshadowing to indicate that Arceus could suddenly (literally) stick his head into the plot. The second is that Hitmonlee could’ve very easily shot down (har har) Hitmonchan’s stanning of rifles as a superior firearm by bringing up magazine-fed shotguns. Repeating-fire shotguns of that design exist, and I have to give Hitmonlee some crap for going into a proverbial gun fight without knowing that. >:V

Comedic Value

7. I’ll admit, I laughed even if the humor was a bit cheap at times. You obviously really don’t like Hitmontop all that much o<o

The individual gags all felt fine, but some of them felt a bit disjointed or out-of-nowhere. It’s an artifact of the story as a whole being done in one take that makes it feel a bit rushed as a whole. I will say that you have some pretty funny narration at times. Make more use of it since huge chunks of your story were disembodied dialogue.

Concluding Thoughts

Your entry is already decently funny, though it occasionally veers into “lol random” territory. In general, I think that if you polish up your entry for broader publishing, that it would benefit more from cutting up into scenes to better sell a progression of time. Doing so also opens doors for gags like Gilligan Cuts and shot-and-chaser moments. You should also add more narration and description in general, since it better breaks up your dialogue and adds opportunities to squeeze in more humor, especially when the narration has an opinion of its own like yours does in some scenes.

I’m looking forward to you putting a fresh coat of paint over things and seeing what becomes of this contest entry sometime in the future. Even if it’s a little rough, you’ve already got a decently funny short story, and I think polishing it a bit would allow your beats to be a bit more impactful.

BOBANDBILL

I found this quite funny throughout!

The grammar and spelling was mostly fine – a few small mistakes here and there, but otherwise consistently solid. The description was also fine – no major complaints there. Maybe sometimes dialogue could have been broken up more often with some description or e.g. movement by the character rather than just on how they spoke. The battles were fun to read.

The plot was fine – a little rushed in places, such as with the arrival of the Psychic invaders, which maybe could have been hinted at earlier on, but I appreciate the overall tale. The theme of which fighting style was the best, and how that was used and subverted in the story was done well.

But my favourite aspect of the entry were the characters themselves. They were all entertaining, each with their own great lines and distinct personalities and beliefs that they/their styles were the best.

I think that was in part why I found your humour the most amusing of these entries. My own highlights include Arceus coming in and declaring GUNS to be the answer, the aforementioned subversion in how the fighting types overcame their opponents, and Hitmontop’s attempt at head standing and eventual declaration to changing his fighting style.

Well done on the story, and for winning the contest as well.
 

pacman000

On a quest to be the best...
Thank you for the contest & the reviews! Even if I didn’t win, seeing feedback is nice.

I wrote another story awhile back, called “Pockemon: A Pokemon Spoof.” Would’ve entered that, but I’d already published it: https://forums.serebii.net/threads/pockemon-a-pokemon-spoof.662828/ The word "Pockemon" makes more sense there, since a bunch of the gags are about Pokémon’s development.

I’d like to say more about why I wrote some things someway, but I’m a bit afraid it would sound like a bunch of excuses. Maybe I’ll write all that up later...

I’ll probably publish the fic here, unmodified, next week. If I ever try my hand at a comedy series I’ll probably rewrite it.
 
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